4 Jaw-Dropping Stats That’ll Change Your Approach to Sales Discovery Calls

Rahul Mathew on August 8, 2024

In many ways, sales discovery calls are the heart of the sales process. Much like a first date, they allow reps and prospects to decide whether moving the relationship forward makes sense.

But discovery calls are like dates in another way, too: They’re your reps’ first — and sometimes only — chance to make a great first impression. If the call is unnecessarily long, one-sided, or confusing to the prospect, there likely won’t be a second date.

So what’s the difference between a great discovery call that leads to a closed deal and a bad one that leads nowhere?

We looked at thousands of discovery calls recorded and included the findings in our 2024 State of Sales Productivity Report to identify the ingredients of a great discovery call. Here are four of our most important findings — and why they should make you rethink your entire approach to the sales discovery call.

What is the sales discovery process?

Let’s get one question out of the way right up front: What is a discovery call?

It may be the first impression — a chance for reps to touch base with prospects, share your value proposition, and address early concerns — but it’s not the first step. A sales discovery call occurs well into the overall sales discovery process.

Before a rep ever reaches for that phone, they’ll likely need to:

  • Perform preliminary lead qualification or scoring
  • Capture valuable information from forms, demo requests, or other interactions
  • Perform research on the lead — including goals, pain points, company background, and more
  • Identify vital points or topics to mention during the call
  • Create a plan, including discovery questions and call duration
  • Request the call in a way that outlines goals and respects the lead’s time

These tasks lay the groundwork for a successful discovery call. They also help ensure that both the rep and the prospect get their questions answered, achieve certain goals, and use the available time well.

Perhaps most importantly, they create an environment that supports sales acceleration and revenue intelligence solutions by setting up your reps to gather the right information at the right time.

Key sales discovery stats

With the basics out of the way, it’s time to discover what a great discovery call looks like. Here’s what our research says:

The average discovery call is

minutes long
0

A successful sales discovery call can’t be too long, or prospects may feel it drags and lacks focus. Of course, the opposite is also true; spending too little time on a discovery call leaves unanswered questions and creates frustration.

You should do some digging if your reps’ sales discovery calls are significantly over or under 38 minutes. Consider monitoring the calls to find out:

  • What questions are being asked
  • Who is talking most — the rep or the prospect
  • How the call is structured
  • What the outcomes are

On average, reps talk for

of discovery calls
0 %

That means prospects speak less than half (43%) of the time.

The best reps develop rapport and relationships with their prospects, but ensuring a sales discovery call doesn’t feel one-sided is also important.

If your reps are talking markedly more or less than this 57%, review call recordings or talk to your team to see:

  • How they’re using their talking time
  • What word choices they’re making and whether they’re using too many filler words or unnecessary questions
  • Whether they’re “making up for” a less engaged or talkative prospect by talking more themselves
  • Whether they’re having trouble “breaking in” if a prospect is talkative
  • How they manage the flow of the conversation

The average rep monologue is just over

minutes
0

On average, a rep’s longest monologue should last about 2 minutes and 15 seconds. That gives the rep plenty of time to address the important points and topics identified in their preliminary research, but it also prevents them from dominating the conversation or causing prospects to get bored and disengage.

What if your reps aren’t following this pattern? Uncover details on:

  • An individual rep’s longest monologue time
  • How much a rep is talking overall
  • Which topics take longer to explain (which may indicate a need for sales coaching)

During discovery calls, there are

questions asked
0
questions answered
0

Keep in mind that a great discovery call is always a two-way conversation. Both the rep and the prospect should ask and answer questions, and when things are really going well, these questions will flow naturally into one another rather than feeling like part of a script.

This year, the number of sales call discovery questions from both parties has decreased significantly. This isn’t surprising, as the overall length of discovery calls has also decreased. If you notice your data doesn’t match, find out:

  • Who is asking the most questions
  • What kinds of questions are being asked
  • Whether each question has a complete, accurate answer

Sales call discovery questions

When planning a sales call, reps know it’s important to ask the right kinds of questions. This isn’t the time to ask for answers that are readily available elsewhere — like on the prospect’s company website.

The most productive sales reps ask these four types of discovery questions:

Determine if an opportunity is worth pursuing.

 Identify a prospect’s needs and uncover a hole that only your solution can fill.

Uncover insights that move deals forward, such as who the key decision-makers and influencers are.

Demonstrate an understanding of a company’s business model and industry-specific challenges.

Here are a few example questions:

Qualification

  • What does your budget look like?
  • What are the main hurdles in choosing and implementing a solution?
  • What is your timeline?

Problem area

  • What are your goals, and what’s keeping you from reaching them right now?
  • How satisfied are you with your existing solution?
  • What are you looking for in a new solution?

Methodology

  • Who are the key decision-makers in your organization?
  • What is the size and structure of your team?
  • What does your current tech stack look like?

Credibility

  • How does [industry trend or event] impact your company right now?
  • Why do customers come to you for [product or service]?
  • How do you beat competition such as [competitor] in [key performance metric]?

Reps should always listen for opportunities to up- and cross-sell. However, their main goal should be laying the groundwork for a successful relationship by obtaining sufficient information, having helpful conversations, and presenting your company as the best possible solution to a given problem. They should also quickly lay out the next steps to indicate interest in continuing to support the prospect.

Nail your next sales discovery call

No one goes into a first date without a little preparation. Your reps need support, tools, and strategies for lead research, scoring, question development, call strategy, and more — and that’s where Mindtickle comes in.

Mindtickle is a revenue enablement platform that integrates all your data, processes, training, and prospect or customer conversations. With all this information in one place, you can better prepare your reps for their next sales discovery call. Better yet, you can track sales performance and other key metrics to see what’s working (and what isn’t). 

Better Sales Discovery Calls with Mindtickle

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This post was originally published in July 2021, updated in May 2023, and again in August 2024.

Data-Driven Sales Coaching: How to Use Data to Drive Coaching Conversations

Helen Waite on July 18, 2024

As a revenue leader, you’re likely well aware of the potential impact of great sales coaching on team performance. In fact, the power of sales coaching is proven. A recent analysis found that top sellers receive significantly more sales coaching than average.

But generic, one-size-fits-all sales coaching doesn’t work. Furthermore, while deal coaching may improve the outcome of a single deal, it won’t have much of an impact on a rep’s long-term behaviors and sales performance.

Instead, sales managers must deliver tailored skill coaching that addresses the strengths and weaknesses of each of their sales reps. But first, they must have the right data to understand what those strengths and weaknesses are.

In this post, we’ll explore why your current approach to sales coaching isn’t working – and why data-driven sales coaching is the answer.

Why coaching conversations must change

Having conversations about performance can be hard, especially if a rep isn’t doing well. It can be especially difficult to call out areas for improvement when you don’t have the specifics to back it up. Relying on data makes these conversations easier.

For sales managers, being able to track and analyze seller performance all in one place using revenue enablement software provides concrete insight into every time you say “you’re doing a great job” or “there’s room for improvement.” Your feedback is rooted in actual performance metrics, rather than running the risk of being considered your opinion rather than fact.

Data also helps us to identify the exact ways each seller can improve. Perhaps one rep is weaker in their competitor knowledge while another may need more support when it comes to operating sales technology. By digging into the data, an effective sales coach can identify opportunities for improvement and, in turn, maximize each rep’s performance.

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What a data-driven approach looks like

In order to adopt a data-driven coaching approach, you should have a clear understanding of the key metrics you should be looking at. These will help you gauge the overall success of your sales force, but really allow you to dig into individual performance to fuel more impactful coaching conversations.

Below we’ve highlighted some key criteria you’ll want to evaluate—and how you can gather the data.

Product knowledge: Assess and certify sellers on their product knowledge with quizzes using different formats. You can create a proficiency threshold score for reps to show they’re knowledgeable experts on your product, which you can test through multiple-choice quizzes, checklists, and written tests.

Reps can also be assigned role-plays to see if they can demo the product, describe what it does and accurately express the value of the product. If you’re using sales readiness technology, all of this can be easily reviewed and scored through artificial intelligence (AI).

Selling behavior: Evaluate how articulate and enthusiastic a rep is on a call, voicemail or presentation as well as the tone. You can also keep track of how many filler words are used. This will gauge their overall confidence in selling your solution.

Selling skills: By tracking sellers’ progress in real-time, sales coaches can get data insights on each rep’s ability to demo, use a sales methodology (e.g. MEDDPIC) on a call, challenge competition, handle objection questions, and evaluate whether or not the correct terms are used to describe the product.

Message consistency: AI-powered keyword analysis is a great way for sales coaches to get better insight into individual competencies and needs based on live interactions during the selling process. When you analyze sales calls (and leave the hard work to AI), you can uncover key problems in deals that didn’t close and start training on common questions you’re finding reps are being asked in the field.

Technology skills: How well do your reps use sales tools? Assess sellers on their knowledge (and correct use) of sales stack tools like Outreach, Ring, Zoom, and Salesforce to see how effectively they’re being put into action.

Using a revenue enablement platform, reps can actually record themselves using the tools, which can then be evaluated and scored. This will give sales coaches visibility into any challenges with tech on the team.

Your new approach to coaching starts now

On top of using data to coach reps, this data-driven approach also empowers you to establish a “profile of excellence” on your sales team. This helps sales managers to identify their best performers and replicate their skillset amongst other reps through training and coaching.

While it certainly makes it easier to track and report on these metrics with revenue enablement technology in place, it’s not impossible to do without. However you gather the data, it’s important to start bringing it into coaching conversations in order to pinpoint areas for improvement, provide more specific feedback, and ultimately empower you as a sales coach to help your team succeed.

Start delivering effective, data-driven coaching at scale with Mindtickle

The impact of sales coaching can’t be denied. However, in order to be effective, sales coaching must be tailored to the needs of each sales rep.

With Mindtickle’s integrated revenue enablement platform, you can start delivering data-driven coaching that’ll improve reps’ behaviors and grow sales performance.

With Mindtickle, you can easily understand deal risk and buyer engagement. Then, you can use those insights to provide coaching to improve the outcome of deals.

Mindtickle also empowers you to go beyond deal coaching to deliver skill coaching that improves long-term results. With Mindtickle, you can understand how reps are performing in the field and what their strengths and weaknesses are. Then, you can use this intel to deliver coaching to improve lagging skills and long-term behaviors and performance.

Of course, delivering coaching and hoping for the best isn’t an effective approach. With Mindtickle, revenue leaders can actually understand the impact of their coaching efforts. Then, they can optimize their approach for even better results.

This post was originally published in June 2021 and updated in July 2024.

Data Driven Sales Coaching with Mindtickle

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The Ultimate Sales Hack: Mindtickle’s Call AI Turbocharges Your Team’s Productivity

Rahul Mathew on May 16, 2024

Meeting revenue targets isn’t just a goal—it’s a priority that comes “BAE” (Before Anything Else).

At Mindtickle, our mission revolves around assisting our customers in overcoming obstacles that obstruct the productivity of their sales teams.

Central to this mission is our product offering: Call AI, a conversation intelligence tool enablement and sales teams leverage to access customer conversations in one central repository while enabling them to analyze seller interactions and track deal progression effortlessly.

As we launch new features, we build solutions that address daily challenges that enablement teams and sales managers experience to enhance enablement and sales team experiences and improve overall productivity.

Let’s look at how Mindtickle’s latest set of features are simplifying the lives of enablement and sales teams.

Evaluating Call AI adoption

Enablement admins use several tools and platforms daily. While managing these tools and platforms is a top priority, understanding how they are used regularly and their adoption is critical to ensuring maximum utilization.

The challenge is that several existing solutions in the market do not provide these insights, leaving admins unable to gauge the effectiveness of their tool adoption strategies.

Our latest release addresses these challenges for our Call AI admins by providing frequent and timely insights into adoption trends. Whether analyzing calls reviewed by sales managers, feedback shared with sellers, or sharing calls internally or externally by sellers. We provide a holistic view of adoption metrics. These insights empower enablement admins to assess user behaviors and refine their Call AI adoption strategies.

Real-time access to Call AI data on the new data platform

Enablement admins need access to raw data beyond the standard reports available in Call AI analytics. However, there is no way to extract this data in real time we are addressing this challenge by providing real-time access to this data via Snowflake (NDP). Another challenge we saw while working with our customers was the inability to continuously develop dedicated integrations with each dialer in the market today.

In our upcoming release, we address this challenge by introducing a seamless SFTP-based integration solution that bridges the gap between Call AI and dialer systems.

Customers can now integrate Call AI with any dialer in the market, improving customer engagement, agent performance, and overall business outcomes. The solution ensures:

  • A seamless integration with dialers via a secure SFTP-based mechanism.
  • The highest level of data security, compliance, and encryption.
  • Insights and analytics derived from conversations.
  • Compatibility with a wide array of dialer systems facilitated through a secure SFTP mechanism.
  • User-friendly interface for easy adoption and utilization.

Empowering sales managers to select other stakeholders to coach sellers

Sales managers managing big teams are often inundated with so many other responsibilities that providing personalized coaching to sellers on calls is hard. Additionally, not having the ability to assign an expert or external training prevents sellers from being coached for specific calls could delay the effectiveness of sellers in the field.

In this release, we are addressing this challenge by enabling sales managers to assign a coach to reps whether it be:

  • Their reporting manager
  • An assigned mentor or peer to coach the seller
  • An external trainer or a group of trainers (coaching is outsourced) who can coach a rep on calls

This makes sales managers more efficient and ensures sellers receive the right guidance without unnecessary roadblocks.

Giving time back to sellers

Sales managers can find reviewing each seller call tedious. With a conversation intelligence tool, sellers can have all the sales calls in a centralized location. Mindtickle’s Call AI provides a Copilot interface to ask important questions and get appropriate insights.

However, this is not scalable if a sales manager has to listen to many calls.

Mindtickle Call AI summaries

We addressed this challenge by helping sellers stay on top of their calls. After each call, Call AI automatically generates a call summary that captures key highlights, attendees, and any action items for follow-up.

This summary is easily accessible for sales managers within the Call AI details page, via email, or available directly in the call record in Salesforce. The call summary ensures you have all the crucial information of the deal at your fingertips, saving time and keeping everyone aligned.

To learn more about how we continue to innovate and empower enablement and sales teams worldwide to improve productivity and achieve unprecedented revenue growth and success, register for the upcoming webinar, Sales Superheroes Unleashed: Transforming Sellers into Superstars with AI, on June 5, 2024.

Mindtickle's 2024 Spring Announcement webinar

Learn how forward-thinking teams can change sales behaviors at scale. Speakers from Cisco and Navistar will discuss how they use AI and other capabilities to positively impact their businesses.

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6 Ways to Have More Productive Sales Calls

Lindsey Plocek on April 3, 2024

When it comes to prospect interactions, quantity certainly matters. If a seller isn’t interacting with prospects, they’re not going to close enough business. But simply increasing the number of meetings and calls isn’t enough to guarantee more deals.

Instead, sellers must also master the skills needed to improve the quality of their interactions. Only then will more of their calls lead to closed deals.

Yet, most sellers are familiar with that sinking feeling that comes after a sales call has gone wrong. Maybe they ran out of time and didn’t have the chance to cover everything they’d hoped to. Perhaps the prospect barely spoke. Or, maybe the buyer raised objections the seller just wasn’t ready to handle — which left them fumbling.

Usually, these calls leave reps (and their managers) wondering what they can do to improve the outcome next time. While no two sales calls are the same, there are commonalities across all great calls. The first step to success is to take a closer look at what the best sales orgs are doing differently on their sales calls. This is exactly what we did.

Recently, we analyzed nearly half a million sales calls recorded in 2023 using Call AI, Mindtickle’s conversation intelligence solution. We also compared this analysis to previous years to understand how things have changed over time. Based on these new insights, we’ve compiled our top six tips for getting the most out of sales calls.

Key takeaways

  • More calls doesn’t mean more closed deals. Focus on improving the quality of rep calls to increase their effectiveness. 
  • Balance participation between reps and customers. Make sure there’s time to ask and answer questions on both sides.
  • Make sure your reps aren’t hogging the stage. Train your reps to listen to customer pain points rather than deliver long monologues. 

1. Optimize sales call length – and make the most of your time

Have you ever scheduled a 30-minute sales call, only to run out of time before you’ve covered everything you wanted to? Maybe the customer had a lot of questions, or perhaps they took things in a different direction than you anticipated. As the end of your time approached, you likely felt a sense of panic kick in, and you may have come across as rushed or disorganized.

So if you’ve scheduled 30 minutes, you have a few options. You can ask the prospect if it’s possible to run over (which it often isn’t, as prospects have busy schedules, too). Or, you can end the call without covering everything — and hope the prospect agrees to another call. Neither situation is ideal.

In order to avoid this situation, it’s important to optimize the length of your sales calls. But what’s the right amount of time to book on your prospect’s calendar?

Our analysis found that the average length of a sales call recorded, transcribed, and analyzed with Mindtickle in 2023 was 30 minutes, which is down from 36-37 minutes the prior year. However, the average length of a discovery call is 36 minutes.

In 2022, the average sales call was
In 2023, the average sales call was
minutes
0
minutes
0

Take a look at your own sales calls to evaluate length. Use those insights to determine how long you should schedule calls for. When in doubt, schedule more time. For example, rather than scheduling a half hour call, schedule it for 40 minutes. If you don’t need the entire time, you can always give the prospect or customer some time back, which is preferable to going over your time.

In addition, be sure your reps show up ultra-prepared. That way, they can make the most of their time with buyers – no matter how much time that may be.

2. Share the mic – especially on discovery calls

A sales call, like any conversation, should be a give and take. Both parties should have an equal opportunity to share what’s on their mind — and ask and answer questions.

But often, that’s not the case. Instead, sales reps do the lion’s share of the talking — while prospects sit quietly and (hopefully) take it all in. On average, customers talk just 37% of the time on sales calls, which is down significantly from 44% in 2021.

In 2021, customers talked
In 2023, customers talked
of the time on sales calls
0 %
of the time on sales calls
0 %

Customers speak up a bit more during discovery calls. During discovery stages, they speak 43% of the time, which is down from 41% in 2021.

If you’re looking to get more out of your sales calls, coach your sellers to give prospects plenty of airtime on calls — especially in the discovery stages. If your team is struggling to get the prospect to talk more, this may be an opportunity to look at the discovery questions asked. Are they thought-provoking? Do they warrant more than a one-word answer? Curating a list of deep-dive discovery questions will get your prospects sharing more, so you can better prepare for the next conversation.

3. Keep monologues in check

Have you ever been in a situation where someone’s telling you a long, drawn-out story? Your eyes might glaze over, while your attention drifts to other things.

The same can happen on sales calls with the rep delivering a long, droning response to a prospect’s questions. As a general rule, the longer the monologue, the more disengaged a prospect gets.

We found that, on average, the longest monologue response delivered by reps in 2023 2 was minutes and 15 seconds. In comparison, the average longest monologue delivered by reps in 2022 was 2 minutes and 43 seconds.

In 2022, the longest rep monologue was
In 2023, the longest rep monologue was
minutes
0
minutes
0

Though monologues are decreasing in length, it’s critical for reps to be mindful. If a seller finds themself speaking for more than a minute and a half, it’s important to check in and see if the prospect has any questions. Doing so helps ensure a balance of rep and prospect participation and engagement.

4. Equip sellers to handle objections

Ideally, every sales call will end on a positive note. The prospect will feel excited about the seller’s solution — and eager to move on to the next step of the sales process.

But that’s not reality.

Negative sentiment, such as uncertainty, hesitancy, competitive mentions, and objections, are extremely common on sales calls. In fact, over half (54%, to be exact) of sales calls contain more negative sentiment than positive.

In 2023

of calls contained more negative sentiment than positive
0 %

But negative sentiment doesn’t mean the call is a lost cause — especially if the seller has been adequately trained and coached to expect resistance and overcome it. When a prospect brings up competitors and challenges statements made during the call, it often means they have done their research, indicating that they have prioritized the search for a solution like yours.
Of course, it’s important to provide enablement that ensures reps know your messaging inside and out and can properly differentiate you from your competitors. Be sure you’re also spending time on enablement topics that help reps build their confidence and overcome common objections.

5. Ask and invite questions

When a rep asks questions, it shows they’re clarifying deal information and deepening their discovery. On average, reps ask 20 questions during sales discovery, which is down from 25 questions the prior year.

In 2022, reps asked
In 2023, reps asked
questions during discovery
0
questions during discovery
0

On the other hand, when a rep receives a question from a prospect, it can be indicative of the potential customer’s needs and priorities. On average, sellers receive 12 questions from prospects during sales discovery. Of course, this will vary based on factors including prospect preparedness, confidence levels, decision-making stage, and time constraints. In 2022, the average number of questions a seller received during a discovery call was 18.

During the best sales calls, questions are asked by both parties. Yet, we’re seeing a decline in questions posed by both buyers and sellers.

Be sure to provide your reps with the coaching and resources they need to improve their questioning techniques. Boosting these skills can help foster more engaging and insightful customer interactions. y In addition, be sure to review your top discovery calls. That way, you can create a list of the questions that best uncover additional deal information and get the prospect thinking.

6. Leverage conversation intelligence software

Let’s be real: sales calls don’t always go well. And when they go south, reps often struggle to articulate what exactly went wrong. That makes it difficult (or even impossible) for the sales manager to provide coaching that’ll improve future outcomes.

Furthermore, front-line managers are busy and don’t have the bandwidth to sit in on every single call for every single rep. That’s why the best sales orgs use conversation intelligence software to bridge the gap.

Conversation intelligence software records sales calls and leverages AI to help managers identify where reps are excelling — and where there are skill gaps. Managers can use these insights to deliver personalized enablement, content, and coaching to close those gaps, improve key skills, and boost sales outcomes.

With all of your calls recorded, reps can better prepare for meetings. Conversation intelligence products like Call AI send digest emails with summaries and key action items from the last call with a prospect. In addition to call prep, sellers can collaborate and coach each other on key selling moments, soliciting feedback and viewing top call moments from their team members.

Ready to get more out of your sales calls?

Want to learn more about what winning revenue organizations are doing to ensure each member of the team is always ready to close deals?

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This post was originally published in June 2022 and was updated in April 2024. 

3 Types of Coaching Sessions You Need to Have With Your Sales Reps 

Vivian Batman on March 21, 2024

Like the best athletes, the best sales reps always ask for and get more coaching from their managers. 

The best managers are coaching their reps a lot more too.

According to our 2024 State of Sales Productivity Report, top managers tripled the number of coaching sessions since 2022, completing 40 sessions per month. Top-performing reps also get four more coaching sessions per month. 

The result? 

More wins. More revenue. 

So where do you start? 

Key takeways

  • The best managers are doing something differently with their reps during coaching sessions.  
  • There are three common types of coaching between managers and reps. We break them down. 
  • Next steps for setting up an efficient, personalized, and scalable coaching program at your own org. 

Coaching must go beyond deal reviews

Creating a “coaching culture” is often identified as a priority for selling orgs. We define a coaching culture as ongoing, data-driven, and infused into every manager and seller interaction.

When done well, it works. 

According to research, companies with dynamic coaching programs achieve 28 percent higher win rates.

Companies with dynamic coaching programs achieve

higher win rates
0 %

Unfortunately, many orgs struggle to create this coaching culture and instead take an ad hoc approach focused on short-term fixes. This approach is almost always primarily focused on deal reviews.

Of course, as-needed deal reviews are an important way to improve the outcome of a given sale. But on its own, deal coaching isn’t enough to improve long-term results.

The best sales orgs take a different approach to coaching. Rather than focusing solely on deal coaching, they deliver a blend of coaching types delivered at regular intervals to improve long-term success.

How the best sales managers are coaching their reps

Back to the best athletes: When they’re asking for coaching, it’s usually to address a specific issue with their game. 

The same can be said for sales reps.

However many orgs struggle to identify rep weaknesses, which makes effective coaching a struggle. 

According to our 2024 Chief Revenue Officer and Sales Leader Outlook Report, only 40% of C-level executives said they can identify rep strengths and weaknesses.

The first step to effective coaching is to understand rep strengths and weaknesses. To do this, you can take a look at your win/loss reports as well as call recordings to get a better understanding of where reps need improvement. From there, you can equip managers with what they need to “fix” those issues and get your reps back into the field with the skills they need to close more deals, 

Let’s take a closer look at the three types of coaching the best sales managers are delivering to reps — and how often they’re doing so.

#1 Opportunity sales coaching

When someone hears the phrase “sales coaching,” their mind might immediately go to opportunity coaching. That’s not surprising, as it’s the most common type of sales coaching. Our research found that 85% of sales reps report being coached on open deals.

Opportunity coaching is an important way to improve the outcome of a deal. For example, a sales manager might identify that something in a deal isn’t going as planned. This might be based on feedback from the rep during a pipeline review meeting. Or, they could get insight by leveraging a conversation intelligence solution that sheds light on how the rep is performing.

Salesforce- Coaching

In either circumstance, the manager can provide opportunity coaching to help the rep steer the deal back on course. And this will improve the chances of them ultimately closing the deal.

How often are the best managers delivering opportunity coaching? Sometimes, this coaching happens at a regular cadence — for example, during a weekly pipeline review. At these meetings, reps and managers discuss current opportunities — and how to move them forward.

Often, though, opportunity is delivered as needed — for example, when a rep raises a question or concern or meeting intelligence uncovers an issue.

#2 Skills sales coaching

In general, skills coaching is a lot less common. A mere 24% of reps report being coached on skills. 

While opportunity coaching improves the outcome of a single deal, skills coaching is required to ensure reps have the skills and behaviors needed to close deals consistently.

The best sales managers recognize the importance of skills coaching on long-term behavior. As such, they aim to deliver at least one skill-based coaching session per month per rep.

What skills do they focus on? The short answer is, it depends. The first step is for organizations to identify the knowledge, skills, and behaviors a rep needs for success by developing an ideal rep profile (IRP).

Ideal rep profile competencies

Then, each rep should be measured against this gold standard. This helps managers identify where there are skills gaps. Armed with this data, sales managers can deliver targeted, personalized skills coaching that addresses the needs of each individual rep.

#3 Targeted sales coaching

If there’s one thing sellers can count on, it’s that things are always changing. New products are released. Pricing or packaging is adjusted. A new competitor enters the marketplace. And those are just a few of the many changes faced by reps.

The best sales managers deliver coaching sessions to address changes and ensure reps are equipped to adapt. Typically, targeted coaching is a single session on a specific, targeted topic — often followed by enablement content such as content, training, or a role-play exercise.

When it comes to sales coaching, follow-up is key

Sales managers are busy. But the best ones know that coaching is worth the time and effort. On average, top managers complete 12 coaching sessions per month.

But coaching isn’t a one-time event. For example, a manager can’t simply deliver a skills coaching session focused on objection handling, check it off the list, and never think about it again — at least not if they expect actual improvement.

The best managers know that proper follow-up and ongoing reinforcement are key to effective coaching. Our analysis found that top managers are three times more likely to assign content, training or a role-play as a follow-up to a coaching session.

This follow-up is paying off. Reps who are assigned follow-up actions post-coaching see an average improvement of 13 points in Sales Readiness Index scores.

Mindtickle Sales Readiness Index

Start closing gaps and optimizing seller performance with coaching

Sales coaching, when done well, is proven to boost sales outcomes significantly. Deal coaching alone won’t cut it. The best sales leaders use a blend of deal, skills, and targeted coaching to ensure the entire sales team has what it takes to close deals.

Sales Coaching in Mindtickle

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Conversation Intelligence Software: 7 Reasons Why Your Sales Team Needs Call Recording to Hit Revenue Targets 

Lindsey Plocek on February 26, 2024

Embracing a formal sales enablement function just isn’t advantageous – it’s transformative.

Orgs with a formal sales enablement function experience a 350% higher win rate and 50% higher quota attainment than those without. 

Orgs with a formal sales enablement function experience a

higher win rate
0 %

Sales enablement is now an essential part of the sales ecosystem, influencing selling skills before, during and after buyer interactions to accelerate win rates and optimize the sales cycle as a whole.

Effective coaching is probably the single most powerful contribution sales leaders can make to their team’s success. And yet most managers have not been formally trained to coach, don’t dedicate enough time to it, or don’t have the necessary supporting tools to do it well.

Investing in conversation intelligence and call recording solutions is critical with the volume of calls and interactions during a typical sales cycle. These tools provide unparalleled access to what’s being discussed during deals and accelerate the manager’s ability to diagnose potential issues and coach through them effectively.

Key takeaways

  • Call recordings and conversation intelligence provide insights into why deals are won or lost, helping managers understand how to coach reps and improve seller productivity. 
  • Conversation intelligence identifies skill gaps, top performers’ winning behaviors, and onboards new reps more efficiently. 
  • Managers can use data-driven insights for coaching conversations with sales reps, and enablement teams can build personalized training programs at scale with the insights from conversation intelligence. 

7 reasons why investing in conversation intelligence software should be a priority

Conversation intelligence has become an invaluable component of sales productivity, giving visibility into a deal’s entire lifecycle. With insights from every sales call, sales leaders can identify trends, evaluate sellers’ performance, pinpoint strengths and weaknesses, and develop targeted coaching techniques to improve outcomes.

Understand the “why” behind lost deals

It’s critical to know why a buyer chose another solution or a deal went dark. Was the rep inadequately prepared? Did they use outdated messaging? Do they demonstrate subpar presentation or negotiation skills? Were they unable to sufficiently answer buyer questions or objections because they lacked product knowledge or competitive intelligence?

The possibilities behind the “why” are endless. Sales managers need these answers to understand what went wrong and how they can help sellers avoid making the same mistakes in future deals.

Mindtickle Call AI with conversation intelligence insights

Identify gaps and weaknesses in each seller’s skillset

From the get-go, conversation intelligence can help sales managers highlight skill gaps for both individual team members and the group in general. Analyzing snippets of crucial conversations can help managers provide their team members and the organization proof of what works, what areas need remediation, and where enablement can have a great impact.

Mindtickle Call AI product image of call snippet

Replicate the success of top-performing reps across your team

Sales reps love a winning, repeatable formula for success. Using conversation intelligence, you can easily understand what separates the best from the rest, getting detailed analytics about your team’s calls that help you identify and encourage winning sales behaviors. Providing sellers with real snippets of how successful reps handled similar situations can become great teaching opportunities.

Onboard new sellers faster

Instead of making new hires shadow an experienced rep, managers can save and share the best examples of real-world cold calls, objection handling and other best practices in easily accessible call libraries. New sales hires can listen to the recordings to pick up on best practices, learn from the mistakes of others, and see firsthand how prospects interact with salespeople.

“Coach the coach” based on data that shows the greatest areas of need

While a conversation intelligence platform helps managers pinpoint coaching opportunities to improve individual outcomes productivity, and sales leadership can also pair conversation intelligence data with readiness programs to provide individualized guidance about the greatest areas of need for each rep – giving managers a blueprint to coach more effectively.

Develop a personalized enablement program using data-driven insights

Sales enablement teams can use trends and gaps identified from conversation recordings to create a sales training and readiness calendar. As an example, analyzing call recordings can show reps foundering on competitive talk tracks or confusing prospects with their explanation of the pricing model. These can be two topics for the enablement and readiness team to add to an upcoming training calendar.

Improve your go-to-market strategy

Analyzing call recordings can reveal actionable insights that extend across the organization. Sales managers can share snippets of recordings and statistics with marketing, giving the team direct insight into the voice of the buyer to help inform priorities, campaigns, messaging and future investments. Listening to calls can show sales enablement and product marketing how prospects respond to talk tracks and sales collateral, giving them visibility into how they could improve messaging or training to better align with the prospect’s needs.

Using conversation intelligence to close the loop

Conversation intelligence gives managers the tools and information they need to optimize sellers’ short-term and future performance.

Managers can analyze key interactions to gauge the progress of deals, uncover buyer sentiments, and determine appropriate next steps to build or maintain momentum within individual sales cycles.

Using AI-based call scoring, managers can compare individualized strengths and weaknesses against best practices. Managers can use conversation snippets to highlight demonstrated skills vs. areas for improvement and then automatically prescribe coaching, training and practice–focused on areas of need.

Conversation intelligence gives managers direct insight into the buyer experience and point of view so they can analyze responses to sales and marketing programs, informing new iterations with data-backed evidence.

A truly successful enablement program will close the loop, powering a continuous cycle of analysis, skill development, coaching and assessment to drive ongoing sales excellence. Conversation intelligence solutions power this continuous loop, delivering benefits across the organization:

  • Salespeople can correct mistakes, increasing productivity and positive business outcomes
  • Managers have significant visibility into how salespeople perform during live interactions
  • Deals are won against more poorly prepared competitors
  • Deal sizes increase as salespeople can more effectively capitalize on every opportunity
  • Best practices are easy to identify, share and replicate
  • More people make or exceed quota, decreasing churn and improving performance against revenue targets
  • Up-to-date messaging helps sales teams improve deal outcomes
  • Key business initiatives succeed because they’re informed by critical field-based evidence

Using a conversation intelligence solution like Call AI empowers your sales team with actionable insights into why deals are won or lost and how to prepare sellers and teams better to succeed. 

Conversation intelligence in Mindtickle

Learn more about how Mindtickle's Call AI conversation intelligence solution helps sellers become more productive and close more deals.

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This blog was originally published in May 2021 and was updated in February 2024. 

How to Use Your CRM, Enablement Analytics, and Call AI to Inform Better Coaching

Elisha Zhang on February 12, 2024

Today we’re re-sharing one of the most popular videos from our series focusing on reducing your tech stack chaos. In it, Elisha Zhang, one of our product marketing managers, shares insights on reducing chaos in sales onboarding by using CRM, enablement analytics, and conversation intelligence. Elisha shares three key takeaways: identifying short-term deal risks by aligning competencies with sales stages, mitigating systemic risks through targeted coaching, closing skill gaps, and building a coaching culture by evaluating teams based on CRM data. The approach enables accurate risk assessment, sustained improvement, and a culture of continuous improvement.

Key takeaways

Identify short-term deal risks

  • Align competencies important to roles with different sales process stages.
  • Develop skill profiles for each rep to identify strengths and gaps.
  • Utilize this information for more accurate short-term risk identification, especially in forecasting and deal reviews.

Mititgate systemic risks and closing skill gaps

  • Coach reps based on identified skill gaps, providing targeted support.
  • Leverage conversation intelligence to review previous calls and offer hands-on feedback for sustained improvement.
  • Evaluate teams or the entire organization on competencies within the CRM context to identify and remediate bottlenecks.

Build a better coaching culture

  • Use data sets to determine trends and root causes of deal challenges, fostering a culture of continuous improvement.
  • Validate hypotheses by reviewing calls from lost deals and incorporating insights into future coaching and training sessions.

Transcription

Hi everyone, my name is Elisha Zhang, and I’m a product marketing manager at Mindtickle. I know that I often find myself anticipating a lot of overwhelmed when it comes to onboarding with a new company, particularly because of all of the technology chaos that is out there in our modern world. I’m here today to help reduce some of that chaos as you enter the new year. In particular, we will discuss how you can use your CRM enablement analytics and conversation intelligence to better inform your coaching.

Once you have married your CRM, enablement, analytics, and conversation intelligence, and those three data sets are in harmony, you can do some things. The first is that you’ll be able to identify short-term risks when it comes to your deals more accurately. And then the second is that in the long term, you’ll be able to mitigate all of that risk, especially at a more systemic level. And you’ll be doing that by closing skill gaps that you’ve identified. Okay, so to actually identify that short-term risk, you will need to set yourself up for success by having competencies that are important to your role identified and mapped to the different stages of your sales process.

Once all of that is done, you’ll want to use those competency profiles and identify a skill profile for each rep, which will help you see if a person has this gap, and this person is very strong in this particular skill. Once you have this better understanding of folks individually, your managers will be better able to use the information in their CRMs for forecasting and deal reviews. That’s because if you see a particularly large deal, for instance, and you’re very excited about it for this quarter, you can go into see who the owner of that deal is and try to understand whether or not their current skill gaps are going to introduce any risk to the field.

For example, I might have a rep who is not particularly strong and negotiation. I can see that this quarter, they have a huge deal entering the negotiation stage and we really want to close it out this quarter. Once I really actually have identified that and see that that is a risk, then I’ll be able to coach them a little bit better because I will know the targeted skill that is going to be necessary to get them through and close this deal.

You’ll be able to do all of that with the help of conversation intelligence as well because you’ll be able to go back and review the calls previously held in the deal. As well as take a look at that rep’s calls from similar stages on different deals, and help provide feedback to help them improve as you give them a little bit more hands-on support.

Of course, once you start to coach folks on skills, you’ll find a lot more sustained improvement and mitigation of risk. In particular, if you can evaluate your teams or your entire organization based on those competencies in the context of your CRM data, it will help you with identifying and determining remediation for actually opening up the bottlenecks.

So perhaps it’s the case that many of your deals are getting stuck or being lost at the proof of concept stage. It might also be the case that you see as an organization that folks are not scoring terribly high on the demo role plays. Well, when you take these two things in combination, you will probably come up with the hypothesis that the demos that we’re doing are not very good. And as a result, we’re losing deals once we get into the proof of concept stage. Okay? Pretty simple. Let’s try and go validate that, take a look at all of your calls that are, or maybe a select few calls for particularly big lost deals from the last quarter or last year, and validate whether or not it was the demo, or maybe it was another skill that was lacking. It could be the case, for instance, that the demo itself was very good. But because we weren’t very good at active listening, it just was a generic demo, as opposed to something that was more tailored for the prospect.

Once you’ve gotten a better understanding and really determined exactly how you want to remediate, maybe you can go ahead and incorporate that into your next Escale. These are just a few ways to use these three data sets to build a better coaching culture. I hope this video has given you some tips on how you can reduce your technology chaos and build a better coaching culture in the new year.

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I’m an AE at Mindtickle. Here’s How I Use it to Close More Deals.

Lindsey Plocek on January 29, 2024

We wanted to talk to one of our sellers to find out how they use Mindtickle daily. Our very own Jacob Cawsey – a former professional soccer player – sat down with us to talk about why conversation intelligence is similar to watching game tape, how he learns from top sellers, the simplicity of using Mindtickle’s unified platform for training and forecasting, and how he works with his manager to handle at-risk deals.

Q: You used to be a high-level athlete. How is using conversation intelligence tools similar to athletes watching game tapes?

As you know, I always see conversation intelligence as an athlete watches the tape back. It’s a super powerful tool. It needs to be complemented with other things to maximize the potential of that piece of software and me as a seller.

But no matter if it’s a BDR, listening back to calls, whatever it may be – discovery calls, negotiation calls, demos – it’s a great way to look back and say to yourself, “Let’s take the AE hat off now. Let’s look at coaching myself.” There’s a huge upside to being your own coach. You sometimes think that objection handling came across a lot smoother than it actually did. You discover stuff you might have missed on the original call, and you can learn from that.

Q: How do you make the most of listening to other sellers’ conversations?

We have fantastic sellers here, and access to their conversations is super helpful. Listening to these calls can be a lesson where I think, “I wish I’d have done that.” Sometimes, I’m unsure why sellers said something or responded in a certain way, so I’ll reach out and ask, “I saw you got asked this question. What was the thought process? Would you have done differently?”

It’s like a digital sales floor, where you still have that interaction you’d have in an office, but you have the data and the film to go back and watch. You can pick away strengths and weaknesses and sharpen your pencils.

Q: Tell us about a typical day using Mindtickle. 

At some selling orgs, the tech stack is all over the place. There’s one place to listen to calls, another to find training content, somewhere else for marketing collateral, and then another location for pricing content. Then you have somewhere else to share content and another app for forecasting. You’re more likely to drop the ball in that scenario because you are working in disjointed systems that aren’t giving you a cohesive view of what’s happening with a deal and a single place to take action. But having an easy-to-use platform like Mindtickle means you have one spot to review calls, forecasts, find content, train, get better, interact, etc.

On a typical day, I might submit my forecast, and I’ll also see I have a message from enablement saying I’ve got a piece of training to take. So I’ll take that while there. Then, I’ll see a few calls with prospects coming up, so I’ll update the digital sales room.

We recently had a new product training, and I completed the first part of an assessment that included quizzes and information checks. I then did some role-plays to verify I knew how to present that product. Because I passed that, I’m at the point where I’m doing Quests, which is reinforcement. So I’m starting to see questions on that product every 2-4 days, ensuring my answer is correct. If I answer a question wrong, the more I see it, so it helps me to retain the knowledge.

Q: How do you use sales calls to prep your solutions consultants?

A good example would be getting our solutions consultants up to speed by tagging them in relevant parts of sales calls. I let them know where they should double down in the demo or where to explore. I also look at questions that I couldn’t necessarily answer and then come up with a plan. When we meet, we’ve got the data, the “film,” and know what we’re doing to create a better buyer experience. We can’t waste [propsects’] time by going and asking the same questions.

Q: How has Mindtickle made forecasting simpler for you?

One of the luckiest parts of my job is how simple it is to forecast. The simplicity of using Mindtickle to see opportunities for this quarter, next quarter, whatever it may be. It’s so simple. I just need to input what I know about the deal, and then my leader can give their opinion. We can talk about it so I can get coached.

Salesforce - Revenue Intelligence

There’s also a layer of AI. For example, we just had a meeting where, afterward, someone went back into the digital sales room. I like having all that come into one funnel to say, “This is where the deals are, and this is what we need to do to progress it.” All I have to do is just keep those data fields up to date and work with my manager.

Those buckets of forecasting data can be anything from the next step to the last meeting, whatever it may be – and that can be quite opinionated, to a certain degree. I submit my forecast every week in about 30 minutes, which then rolls up to leadership. It’s so simple to use. It saves me time, but it gets me so much more out of my leadership.

Q: How do you use Mindtickle to tackle deal uncertainties?

You might hear during a call that budgets have been pushed back another quarter. We’re now looking at about three months from closing. Or you might hear that some decision-makers are leaning into competitor A. All of a sudden, you have a better chance because you now know there are some people you haven’t hit the homerun with. You can ask yourself, “Where can I do more?”

AI also looked at the last conversation and noted that the economic buyer mentioned her challenges. On top of that, there’s not been a meeting in two weeks, and the prospect is not going into the digital sales room as much. These aren’t necessarily the complete truths in that the deal will not happen, but AI will indicate that this deal is at risk.

So, instead of having to explain the whole situation, my boss and I can both look at what’s happening and talk. We see the deal is still within budget, but it’s just getting pushed back three months, which we heard straight from the economic buyer. We can see from the notes that Person A is the ultimate decision-maker; however, we know they take B and C’s opinions into perspective – and I understand why the AI is saying that.

For the next steps, we might send follow-up emails to the people who may be looking the other way to understand if there’s anything we’ve missed. We might drive them toward the digital sales room to see what they look at. It always gives you a way to make sure there’s no stone left unturned.

Putting it into action

Based on our chat with Jacob, here’s how you can use his experience with your own reps:

  • Incorporate conversation intelligence and encourage reps to use it as a self-coaching tool. Look at calls at every stage of a deal to identify opportunities for improvement in places like objection handling and communication skills.
  • Learn from your top sellers. Reach out to winning reps to understand how they handled specific challenges within a deal and share those learnings across the team. Look at it as a “digital sales floor” where collaboration helps sharpen strengths.
  • Get more efficient with Mindtickle. Streamline your reps’ daily tasks into one platform so they’re not working in disjointed systems. Build an easy and integrated experience where reps can forecast, engage in training, and prepare for next steps in every deal.

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How To Choose A Conversation Intelligence Platform

Lindsey Plocek on January 17, 2024

For B2B sales teams, meeting customers’ needs and expectations has become more challenging than ever — and also more important.

And it’s not just expectations that are growing. Tech stacks are too.

According to research, 80% of B2B buyers expect the same buying experience as B2C customers. Meanwhile, the average number of SaaS tools used by companies has increased by 1,275% since 2015.

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However, those needs and expectations have become increasingly complicated, including personalized service, empathetic listening, consistency and connection across business departments, and more.

To meet these market demands and support revenue goals, companies must have deep insight into the front-line conversations their sales teams are having, as well as their team’s level of sales productivity.

Fortunately, you can have complete visibility into these conversations with AI-powered conversation intelligence platforms. In this article, we’ll give you a quick rundown of how these tools can boost your sales performance and how to choose the best conversation intelligence solution for your business.

What is a conversation intelligence platform?

The conversation intelligence platform is quickly becoming the cornerstone of the sales tech stack for companies who recognize the old methods are no longer sufficient. These systems use artificial intelligence and machine learning to gather and analyze sales conversation data from calls and emails; accurately measure customer sentiment; and compile insights for improved sales performance.

In fact, studies have shown conversation intelligence can drive at least a 64% increase in revenue generated by reps in their first quarter and a 50% average reduction in ramp-up time for new hires.

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Conversation intelligence technology provides unparalleled insight into conversations with potential customers. It enables more accurate deal health assessment and forecasting by objectively tracking deal risk indicators across 100% of your sales pipeline interactions.

This data also gives managers and reps a single system of record to elevate rep performance during customer interactions, incorporating:

  • Call recordings
  • Call scoring and analytics
  • Customer sentiment analysis
  • In-line coaching
  • Best practices

This visibility is key to identifying opportunities to improve sellers’ skill sets while also helping you understand the tactics top performers are using, so you can ensure salespeople are equipped with the skills and best practices they need to win more deals.

Conversation intelligence helps managers create coaching blueprints to provide the right training and support for salespeople. It also supports faster and more effective hiring and onboarding of new team members.

Common conversation intelligence use cases

Conversation intelligence software works across multiple channels, improving performance and motivation throughout the organization, from sales reps to sales leadership. It enables companies to:

  • Help sales reps actively listen instead of note-take and share calls across the organization to facilitate better hand-offs
  • Improve conversion rates throughout each stage of the sales process by providing data on what interactions drive deals forward (or not!)
  • Help customer-facing roles improve the sales experience
  • Make it easier for managers to support and coach sales reps
  • Assist leaders in developing effective product and marketing strategies that drive revenue and growth

Today, two-thirds of companies feel their enablement programs fall short. For front-line sales managers, conversation intelligence platforms help them know when to have one-on-one training sessions and how to coach their salespeople in a more relevant and effective manner.

The platform’s sentiment analysis capabilities empower you to keep deals advancing through the sales process or proactively address deal risks while improving metrics like close rates and deal value.

These same capabilities can also help customer success managers improve Net Revenue Retention (NRR) as well as tailor their coaching to reps’ true needs.

For revenue leaders, conversation intelligence means improved deal intelligence — providing complete real-time visibility into the health and status of your accounts’ deals. It also empowers more accurate sales forecasting, helping leaders and teams plan, budget, hire, and allocate resources more effectively.

Lastly, conversation intelligence gives product managers easy access to user feedback so they can make data-informed decisions about product features and priorities.

How can a conversation intelligence platform help you grow your business?

No matter how knowledgeable and experienced a leader is, making effective decisions and driving growth can be challenging without the necessary data and insights. Unfortunately, these are often lacking, which weakens results across organizations.

Sales leaders often have limited visibility into how customers feel about new products and services. As a result, they struggle to pinpoint blockers that reduce productivity.

Revenue teams lack a macro view of how every program and person in the sales organization is performing. They also struggle to track customer interactions, making it difficult to align efforts across teams and develop accurate forecasts.

Enablement leaders have difficulty demonstrating examples of winning behaviors in their training programs or measuring the impact of their efforts on business outcomes.

Conversation intelligence provides the insight you need to overcome these challenges and drive growth by providing 100% visibility into calls.

This helps you improve the customer experience both during the sales process and in the successful adoption of your solutions after the deal is closed.

For sellers, productivity improves because they have access to a unified platform where they can find everything they need, including the transcript and a list of action items or next steps, as well as get immediate feedback after their calls.

And for your go-to-market strategy, conversational intelligence offers individualized, high-value analytics and reporting, insight into the voice of the customer, sentiment analysis, and suggestions to improve messaging to align with the customers’ needs.

5 tips to choose a platform for your business

When evaluating conversation intelligence software solutions, you should start by considering the criteria listed below. But there’s more than just these five tips – It’s important to dig deep to find a platform that works for you and your business. Here are our top five things to consider when choosing the best conversation intelligence platform for you.

Nearly every function at your company can benefit from and use conversation intelligence — from sales leadership to product, marketing, managers, reps, enablement, and operations. Look for a solution that makes it easy for each type of user to find the calls they need and specific moments within them without thinking.

As you’re looking for a solution, keep in mind everything your team has on its plate: seller coaching, call reviews, giving feedback, keeping tabs on pipeline performance, and making accurate forecasts. For all of these tasks, conversation intelligence does the heavy lifting.

Conversation intelligence provides powerful insights into key deals and accounts. But building a business deal by deal won’t scale. Instead, look for a solution that helps you uncover the ideal competencies that lead your top reps to crush quota and achieve sales outcomes. We call those “winning behaviors,” and we use data from real conversations to model them out.

One key to successfully implementing a new software solution is to choose a platform that adapts to your team members’ workflow rather than making them adapt to it. Finding the right fit will make collaboration between departments easier, visibility more targeted, and teams more organized and productive

To avoid unnecessary legal issues, reputation damage, or hefty fines, you need to make sure your conversation intelligence platform is secure and compliant. This allows you to safely and consistently offer top service.

Why choose Mindtickle?

Mindtickle is already recognized as the leading sales readiness platform. It also provides the conversation intelligence you need to support sales, customer success, and revenue growth.

Call AI, Mindtickle’s conversation intelligence solution is integrated with our revenue productivity platform, providing a single place for training, content, and coaching. This helps revenue teams engage the market with purpose and close deals with confidence.

Why build a complicated tech stack when you can use just one platform for your sales and revenue needs?

Mindtickle gives you one source of truth for sales enablement and training, sales content management, conversation intelligence, sales coaching, and analytics — unifying your approach to productivity.

 

Conversation Intelligence in Mindtickle

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This post was originally published in January 2023 and was updated in January 2024. 

How to Analyze Sales Call Recordings to Uncover Valuable Customer Feedback

Rahul Mathew on January 16, 2024

A call recording bot makes its way into almost every sales call and meeting these days.

But how do you actually use those recordings?

Sharing calls with other teams is an invaluable way to get insights from customers and prospects that might otherwise be lost. 

Our research from the 2023 State of Sales Productivity Report found that the average conversation intelligence user shared 14 calls per month and left four comments on calls per month to transfer knowledge to teammates.

Average number of calls shared internally

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It’s critical to know the “why” behind the customer’s decision. Did sellers fail to articulate the value of your solution? Did the messaging miss the mark? Was another vendor’s pricing more competitive? Did the seller lack the competitive intelligence to adequately address the customer’s questions or objections?

Not understanding the wants, needs, concerns, and expectations of buyers, and lacking insight into the customer experience during sales calls, can have dire consequences to your business including:

  • Deals are lost to better-prepared competitors
  • Key business initiatives – competitive and market strategies, sales methodologies, etc. – fail too frequently
  • Best practices are difficult to identify, share, or replicate
  • Outdated messaging affects deal outcomes
  • Fewer reps make quota
  • Churn increases
  • Your company misses revenue targets

Call recordings reveal the “why” behind customer decisions

Using conversation intelligence and call recording tools, sales organizations can automatically capture and transcribe live sales conversations to reveal the “why” behind wins and losses. Your sales managers get access to invaluable insights about your customers and their interactions with your sales teams so you can better understand:

  • How customers perceive your brand
  • What they think about your solution and its value
  • How they view the competition
  • What objections they have
  • Why a deal may be in jeopardy
  • What more they expect from your company

AI-driven analysis of sales call recordings can reveal a seller’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as trends such as the talk-to-listen ratio, the frequency of objections or how often customers mention a specific competitor across all calls. Your sales managers can identify areas for improvement by digging into high points or shortcomings during conversations. They can understand the topics and themes discussed and the overall impact of the interaction.

Then, using these data-driven insights, your managers can diagnose conversations, identify personalized sales coaching opportunities, implement best practices across your teams, and ensure sales methodologies and training align with the needs and expectations of the buyers in your market.

How to create a customer feedback loop to improve your go-to-market strategy

Analyzing call recordings can deliver actionable insights that extend across the organization. To ensure ongoing alignment and to optimize your organization’s go-to-market strategy, you can use call recordings to establish a strong feedback loop across sales, customer success, and marketing.

Most sellers want feedback on their performance but are hesitant to ask for it. On top of that, most feedback from sales managers is anecdotal and not based on any objective assessment. An effective feedback loop incorporates insights from call recordings and enables managers to identify and close gaps in knowledge and skills.

Managers can provide direct feedback to individual sellers by commenting on specific recording snippets – offering critiques, comments, or advice. Using insights gleaned from call recordings, managers can recommend or request specific coaching and training opportunities to address competency or skill gaps and then continue to analyze future customer calls to gauge performance improvements. 

The majority of sellers want to know your top rep’s secret sauce. They’re seeking inspiration and guidance on creative ways to position and address questions. Using call recordings, managers can share best practices from key snippets to motivate sellers and inform ongoing training. For example, during sales onboarding, new hires can review recordings and snippets from the best sales conversations and then practice through role-play so managers or other team members can offer qualitative and quantitative feedback submitted by new sales reps.

Call recordings can ensure nothing gets lost in translation between sellers and customer success teams. Sellers can share account history, information, and updates to execute a seamless handoff. Customer success teams can share recordings, snippets, and information with sellers if they identify new issues or opportunities within an account.

Call recordings give marketing direct insight into the voice of the customer, providing an insider’s view of buyer pain points and challenges. Marketing teams can team create, campaigns and messaging that speak directly to customer needs. Call recordings may uncover that current positioning is not resonating with customers or differentiated enough from the competition.

Customers are telling you what they think; you just need to listen

Some leaders might be unsure about call recordings because they don’t want to come across as intrusive. The value of analyzing call recordings isn’t to spy on buyers or sellers, but to reveal direct, actionable insights into the buyers in your market – their wants, needs, perceptions, and objections.

It’s also important to keep in mind that the most successful reps have a growth mindset. They don’t let embarrassment or insecurity get in the way of their professional growth. Call recordings help identify sellers’ strengths and weaknesses so managers can give them advice, feedback, training, and tools to help them be more successful. 

Call recordings help pinpoint what’s working and what’s not, establishing a continuous feedback loop between sales, customer success, and marketing to ensure ongoing visibility and enable continuous improvement. Using insights gleaned from the voice of your own customers gives your organization a significant competitive edge:

  • Sellers are empowered to win against more poorly prepared competitors
  • Key business initiatives are far more likely to succeed because they’re informed by critical field-based evidence
  • Best practices are easy to identify, share and replicate
  • Marketing can craft messaging that aligns buyer needs
  • More sellers will make or exceed quota
  • Your organization will meet or exceed revenue targets

Conversation Intelligence in Mindtickle

Learn more about conversation intelligence and how Mindtickle's Call AI is helping other organizations get actionable data from customer calls.

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This post was originally published in May 2021, updated in July 2023, and again in January 2024. 

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